Laura's DC

For the family in CT

2008-12-24T11:08:00.003-05:00

I told my mother about this Christmas display at the Australian embassy a few years ago, and she asked for a picture. I planned to go to Mass Ave tonight to get a picture myself, but Jes Google-imaged it, saving me the trouble of taking a night picture at a busy intersection. So, here it is.

I love the Aussie embassy. I walked by there just about every day on my way to SAIS. They have eucalyptus growing right along the sidewalk, which I always found amusing and pleasant.

something I found very moving

2008-05-29T17:38:00.002-05:00

I was reading a piece by Ian Frazier in The New Yorker ("Hungry Minds," May 26, 2008) about his experience running a writer's workshop at a soup kitchen in Chelsea. He left New York and his volunteer position for a few years, and when he returned to New Jersey, he took his daughter into the city:

I took my daughter into Manhattan to go to museums and reacquiant her with the city generally. She was in fifth grade and curious about everything. At the end of the day, as we were standing in line at the Port Authority waiting for our bus back to the suburbs, a man who had been in the writers' workshop came walking down the line. At each person he stopped and tried to sell a copy of Street News. He was wearing layers of semi-disintegrating clothes and he had his hair in short, multidirectional corkskrew dreadlocks. Most of the people he went up to did the usual thing of recoiling slightly and looking away. When he got to us, he recognized me, and we began to talk. I asked how he was doing and he said pretty well--he had written a piece for Street News and it had been published recently. He asked if the workshop would be starting again soon, and he said he'd be there. I bought a copy of Street News for myself and another for my daughter and said I'd see him in the spring, and we got on our bus. When we arrived home, my wife asked my daughter how she liked the city. "It was pretty good," she said. "Not much happened. At the bus station, we ran into a friend of Daddy's."

The little girl's description of her trip to New York brought tears to my eyes. How amazing that she spends the day seeing the city's impressive buildings, its collections, and what she finds remarkable is this small, human connection--one that most people around her rebuffed.

The Debate over Where G!d Stands in Pr William's

2008-02-04T07:53:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reported on an open letter from 50 religious leaders offering to help mediate the strife over illegal immigration in Prince William's County (VA). I commend these religious leaders for defending the humanity of illegal immigrants when so many in Pr William's County have vilified them. They cite some of the Biblical passages that are most moving to me about the need to treat the stranger like one's self for we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.

Here's what I find remarkable about the board of county supervisors' response. Corey Stewart, an at-large Republican member, said of the religious leaders, "We don't need them as an intermediary . . . They need to do what they do best: serve their congregants and attend to their denominations and not get involved in partisan politics."

His statement pretends that the anti-illegal immigrant movement in Northern Virginia (NoVA) has not relied on faith-based arguments itself. But, in fact, it has. Greg Letiecq, president of Help Save Manassas, can be seen on youtube citing biblical passages about the importance of following law as an argument for why NoVA must crack down on illegal immigration. The utter biblical illiteracy of that argument is striking.

Biblical passages that exhort people to follow the law and the authorities have nothing whatsoever to do with man-made law. Rather, they refer to G!d's law and, I believe, to the theocratic authorities of the time. There is no religious argument to be made for man-made law because no religion that I know of believes that man or his laws are infallible.

I don't wish to see this debate degenerate into a war of feuding Biblical interpretations. Rather, I find this to be a case that highlights how people of faith can disagree , and, contrary to common belief, faith can motivate people to take the left side of an issue, not just the right.

More Hopeful about 2008 elections

2008-01-21T17:52:00.001-05:00

No matter who wins the primary race on the Democratic side, Clinton or Obama, I'll be happy. A McCain victory on the Republican side would also please me, and I may even learn to look on the bright side if Romney wins (despite his anti-immigrant race baiting).

I'm a Democrat who's voted Republican precisely once in her life. (My next door neighbor ran for registrar of voters.) Why am I so happy about the prospects of one or two particular Republican candidates?

Because for the first time in my politically conscious life, the American people may get a presidential election worthy of their attention.

What is a presidential election worthy of us? A presidential election in which both candidates are good options for moderate voters. An election in which much of the population feels it could vote either way and must really make a choice. Contrast this to the 2000 and 2004 elections, in which a small portion of the electorate was undecided and candidates instead focused on turning out their supporters.

Right now I'm pretty optimistic about the 2008 election. It might be the rare presidential election that makes me more proud to be an American.

I wasn't so sunny about the election a few weeks ago. Up until McCain's win in South Carolina and New Hampshire, I was pessimistic . In my mind's eye, I could picture the 2008 elections becoming a sorry, exhausting reprisal of the 2000 and 2004 elections: a campaign in which the culture wars feature front and center. In a moment of fatality after the Iowa caucus, I bet my husband one weeks of dish washing that Huckabee would win the Republican primary. (Despite the suds involved in losing this bet, I'm pretty happy that it is increasingly likely that I will lose.)

If you think about presidential elections since I became politically cognizant (1996 on), my prediction made sense. Of the three presidential races I recall, two placed the country's cultural dividing lines front and center: Bush v. Gore, and Bush v. Kerry. The candidates in these races seemed to loathe each other because their concepts of the United States differed so greatly (remember that moment in 2000 when Gore said he didn't hate Bush and Bush looked stunned?).

Here's to a 2008 election that might actually make Americans feel like they have something in common: a tough choice.

2008-01-21T17:52:00.000-05:00

I married a huge dork

2008-01-17T22:35:00.001-05:00

My sister and I once discussed (when both unattached) how we thought dorky men make ideal mates. Why? It was hard to put one's finger on it, but it has something to do with how dorks are generally substantive people with passionate interests. The fact that we both consider ourselves dorks doubtlessly contributed to this conclusion.

Last night, I discovered that my husband was even more precociously dorky than I previously thought. He let slip that he wrote a paper on the subject of Stalin in the third grade. The conversation unfolded something like this:

Me: What?! You wrote a paper on Stalin in the third grade?! [flabbergasted pause] What was the assignment?

Husband: To write about something that interested you.

Enough said.

The Proper Role of Religion in Politics

2008-01-17T22:18:00.000-05:00

As I belatedly update my blog, I want to link to an op-ed Charles Krauthammer wrote a month ago that I found refreshingly nuanced and sensible. To give you just a taste:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it's only going to get worse. I'd thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, "Do you believe every word of this book?" -- and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

The article reminded me of a speech I read several years ago in Mario Cuomo's collected speeches. (Yes, I know, Krauthammer and Cuomo are an unlikely combination.) In a speech that Coumo gave at Notre Dame while governor of New York, he argued that his Catholicism informs some of his political stances, but that he should only pursue those religiously-inspired policies that are suitable for his diverse constituency. In other words, his Catholicism can inspire his advocacy for a social safety net, but he would not support any policy that imposes the Catholic church's teaching on contraception on his diverse constituency of Sikhs, Protestants, Jews, and non-religious.

I found Cuomo's speech to be a persuasive explanation of how one's public service and private faith coexist--one that speaks to me as a politically literate Jew-- and Krauthammer's op-ed to be a refreshing defense of the separation between church and state.

Ken Burn's Civil War

2008-01-17T22:11:00.000-05:00

Just the other day I finished watching the last episode of Ken Burn's Civil War documentary. I have never seen anything so perfect.

I never would have thought that I would enjoy a 12-hour documentary series about the war. I figured that such things were for tobacco-stained gray-hairs who read spend their summers traipsing battlefields, who read schmaltzy novels about the war, and collect anecdotes about Lee. Rather, I found it to be a really moving film that addressed the root causes, strategy, and tactics of the war and its human cost and meaning.

Certain parts in which leaders stood out for moral vision and moderate temper struck me as the best of Americanness.

Take for instance Lincoln's second inaugural speech, with its declaration that

Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'

Or General Grant's statement to his men after Lee's surrender that the rebels are now their countrymen. He then made a peace offering of rations to the starving Confederate soldiers.

Sherman said of Lincoln, "Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

I should hope we elect a leader in 2008 with even a distant reflection of the humane feeling and vision of these men.

2007-09-17T07:58:00.001-05:00

Jes' description of cashmere

2007-09-17T07:57:00.001-05:00

In a conversation I had with Jes a few months ago, I told her I was a little unclear on what cashmere is, and she described it this way: "It feels like . . . sunshine and peaches and Christmas and love." I felt that this needs to be captured for the world.

credit where credit is due

2007-03-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

We don't give the Russians (Soviets) enough credit for winning WWII at tremendous cost to their soldiers and citizens.

An except from a poem by Ilya Ehrenburg that Richard Overy uses in his book "Why the Allies Won":

We speak of deep night, deep autumn
when I think back to the year 1943,
I feel like saying 'deep war.'

finally done with midterms

2007-03-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

I had two midterms on Tuesday, and a review of a book due today for Strategy and Policy.

A rundown of how it went. The corporate finance midterm was ok, but I somehow skipped a page. That page had only ten points on it, I did pretty well on other parts, and the exam is curved, so I am trying to remain calm about that.

The trade exam was, I thought, very easy.

The review essay for Strategy and Policy: I should have picked something shorter. A lot of other people reviewed essays, and I reviewed a book The assigment was hard and I am afraid that I summarized too much. I really agreed too much with the authors to be very critical of him. He was simply very persuasive.

I am so glad to finally be done. After class I"m going to do a few administrative things in Nitze, then go home and sleep and go out to dinner. Eli and I have been planning to have Indian food as a reward for this week for days now. I'm looking forward to samosas and curry.

The wisdom of Henry Kissinger

2007-03-04T11:19:00.000-05:00

"Russia has always been an empire. Russia had always tried to dominate its surrounding states. Russia has never had separation of church and state, so that the church has really been a state institution. And all of these factors have produced a tremendous tendency toward a solitarianism and toward conquest. And when a nation behaves a certain way for 400 years, you have to assume that it has a certain proclivity in that direction."

2007-03-04T11:18:00.000-05:00

Back to studying

2007-03-02T12:20:00.000-05:00

I have a corporate finance midterm, a trade midterm, a book review for Strat and Policy, and a job interview next week. Time to return to the books.

Big News

2007-03-02T12:15:00.000-05:00

My strategic studies prof was just named an advisor to Secretary Rice . I think this is another good sign that the Bush administration (with the apparent exception of Cheney, who is all ideology and no common sense) is through with what Professor Cohen himself termed "happytalk." After listening to him speak on the fly about any number of military policy issues this semester, I think he knows a heck of a lot, thinks sharply, and expresses himself vividly. They're lucky to have him.

Doh!

2007-03-02T12:12:00.000-05:00

Apparently the Swiss don't have GPS .

Getting Good

2007-02-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

My corporate finance class is finally getting to the good stuff.

After a month of doing what amount to math problems (for example, finding the present value of securities) we are getting to the substance: capital budgeting and raising capital. Granted, capital budgeting is also like applied math, but it's more clearly applicable in a business setting than finding the present value of a growing perpetuity. And raising capital is somehow dramatically interesting.

ah, sweet bliss

2007-02-26T16:09:00.000-05:00

Another day of doing nothing but econ problem sets.

David Satter's talk on the Litvinenko murder

2007-02-22T22:06:00.000-05:00

Today I saw David Satter give a talk on the Litvinenko murder. I agree with some of his points (that the FSB likely killed him, that the Kremlin's accusations that Berezovskiy and/or Nevzlin did it are opporunistic), but I also found that he jumped to conclusions regarding the Kremlin's motives for hampering the British investigation. His theory implied that the Kremlin has something to hide, but I think that their motive may be national pride. If nothing else, his assumption reminded me of the mistakes Americans made regarding WMD in Iraq. Because Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in and he was hostile towards us, we figured he must have something to hide. Turns out that part of what officials wanted to hide (in those intercepts that Powell played for his UN speech) was irregularities in how they had disposed of weapons. Likewise, Satter's guessing at the Kremlin's motivations seemed likely to lead to neat but mistaken conclustions.

He also was too negative in his appraisal of the Kremlin. Of course the Kremlin does many things that I condemn, but I don't think the leadership is there solely to abuse the population. I find it hard to respect anyone who can't say anything positive about the Kremlin as a real scholar of Russian politics. How can one be balanced and have nothing at all that's positive to say about what Putin has done in the past 7 years? What about benefits reform? What about the fact that the country is more stable and he has a approval rating in the vicinity of 80%? Yes, there is corruption, Putin has installed Petersburg and FSB buddies, and there has been a rollback of democracy, but I don't think it's right to be 100% negative. 100% negativity makes one suspect that the speaker is biased and not diligent in his consideration of other viewpoints. Satter's demeanor was such that I got the impression he is a Cold Warrior who never got over the high one gets from condemning the Evil Empire. And this guy used to write for the Financial Times? I thought journalists were more diligent in tracking down multiple angles.

Yay for Jes!

2007-02-22T21:50:00.000-05:00

My sister Jes and I went for icecream at Coldstone Creamery this evening. We each had super-chocolatey icecream with brownie bits.

It's good to see Jes doing so well and being so happy. She explained to me over dinner about cytoflorology, or something like that, and I was just so proud of how much she knows. Yay for Jes!

SAIS's most quotable econ prof

2007-02-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

Today Prof Weiss said the following:

"Don't use the word 'trickle down.' It sounds sexual."

Better Sanctions

2007-02-07T08:50:00.000-05:00

There's a movement to create smarter sanctions that can punish illegitimate and inhumane regimes with less adverse effects on the population than traditional trade sanctions. It's not a subject I know much about, but it's of great interest to a lot of IR types. The Washington Post did a nice article on loan sanctions in the opinion section.

an excerpt from Free Trade Under Fire

2007-02-06T12:05:00.000-05:00

I'm now reading Free Trade Under Fire by Douglas Irwin for my trade theory class. One of the chapters describing the gains from trade went into the non-economic gains, which Montesquieu and Mill described as the "intellectual and moral" benefits. I quote:

"[A] study of the effects of McDonald's on Asian culture noted that rest rooms in Hong Kong previsouly had the reputation for being unspeakably filthy. When McDonald's opened in the mid-1970s, it redefined standards , setting a new, higher benchmark for cleanliness that other restaurants were forced to emulate. . . . When McDonald's first opened in Moscow, a young woman with a bullhorn stood outside its doors to explain to the crowd that the servers smiled not because they were laughing at customers but because they were happy to serve them."

If clean restrooms and smiling service are absolutely better, regardless of cultural differences, than dirty restrooms and unsmiling service, it makes you wonder why some Hong Kong restaurant didn't use clean restrooms to get an edge over its competitors before the advent of McDonald's. (I have no questions as to why Russian customer service people's didn't smile pre-McDonalds; smiling just isn't as much of a universal good across cultures as cleanliness is, and Russian customer service was still weighted down from the baggage of communism and the lack of a profit motive.)

Mill said, "[T]here is no nation that does not need to borrow from others, not merely particular arts or practices, but essential points of character in which its own type is inferior." It's hard to know whether to agree or disagree given the strength of the Hong Kong example (a pro-Mill point) and my native, liberal instinct to say that cultures aren't "inferior" from each other, they're just different.

what I'm taking this semester

2007-02-06T07:16:00.000-05:00

For the curious, I'm taking four classes this semester:
- Corporate Finance
- Trade Theory
- Survey of Brazil's Politics and Economy
- Strategy and Policy, a class on military thought

So, the idea is that Corporate Finance could help me in the work world, the trade theory class is required to graduate (but interesting), the class on Brazil is in order to learn about an interesting place OTHER than Russia, and the military thought class is because it's just about impossible to speak intelligently about US policy (or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) nowadays without some understanding of military concerns.

you know it's early in the morning when . . .

2007-02-06T07:15:00.000-05:00

...you pour hot water into your breakfast bowl before you've added the oatmeal.

Reindeer Blood Bath

2007-02-06T06:55:00.000-05:00

The Moscow Times did a front page story and photo essay about an effort to raise reindeer for commercial purposes in Sakha, a far north region of Russia. (The largest subnational entity in the world, according to the article.)

What are the commercial uses for reindeer, you ask? Well, evidently, if one objects to killing and eating them, the commercial uses involve harvesting their antlers and . . . blood. According to the article, the blood is used to make bath powder. As you might imagine, this is not for widespread commercial use but for a narrow market of indigenous peoples. Per the Times, "The powder is dissolved in water to create a modern version of the traditional blood bath, which is popular among the indigenous peoples as a cure for many ailments."

The Russian Idea at Work

2007-02-03T18:32:00.000-05:00

Russians have a messianic concept of themselves as the only true Christians, people who have sacrificed repeatedly, without due appreciation from the rest of the world, in order to save humanity. First, they fended off the Mongol hordes, then they fended off the Nazis. This is called the Russian Idea.

I think this Jesus-concept is very important to understanding them, and I also find there to be more than a kernel of truth in the notion that they have not received sufficient respect for their role in defeating the Nazis in WWII. (My Cold War-era high school history textbook said that the US permitted the Russians to fight the battle of Berlin (which it described as a cakewalk) because we felt bad for them what with all the casualties they had suffered on the Russian front. Excuse me, but the Battle of Berlin was bloody urban warfare.)

You can see the Russian Idea at work in a press conference Putin gave the other day. Quoting here from February's 2nds Moscow Times (www.moscowtimes.com):

"Interestingly, when commenting on the factors that strengthened Russia's defense capabilities, Putin named Orthodox Christianity and the country's other 'traditional' faiths in the same breath as the national nuclear shield."

My Russified Computer

2007-01-05T09:49:00.000-05:00

When I went to the Mac store to buy my computer, my very first question for the saleswoman was whether I could write in Cyrillic with my Mac. From the day I've owned my beloved laptop, Russian has been one of its languages.

At some point along the way, as I actually started doing more Internet searches in Russian, my computer began to occasionally assume that Russian was my preferred language. When I first downloaded Mozilla FireFox, the company directed me to the Russian version as the default. My iTunes switched from English to Russian at some point during my updates. Last night, as I tried to establish my first Google Group (an email list that will hopefully permit me to notify people when my wedding blog is updated), Google Groups came up in Russian as the default. I went through the Russian form a little more slowly than I would have managed the English, but I understood it nonetheless, and, as always, I was a little proud of my bilingual computer literacy. I put Eli and I on the Google Group, selected the settings, and called it a night.

A few minutes later, I happen to be looking over Eli's shoulder as he sits at his he says, "What!" His invitation to the Google Group had arrived . . . written in Russian. We laughed so hard we could barely talk. We tried to envision what would have happened had we sent the Russian version to forty of so friends and family. Eli pronouned me a silly person for permitting my computer to interact with me in whatever language in chose, without ever trying to steer it toward English. As we turned in for the night, I promise to erase the google group the following morning and start over in the king's English.

I just took care of the problem, and I didn't have to erase the group and start from scratch. It turns out that it's really easy to change the language on the existing group. Curiously, the emails notifying people that they've been added to the group now arrive in English, but Google Groups still presents me with a Russian-language interface.

Visiting the Capitol Rotunda

2006-12-31T17:07:00.000-05:00

Today, Eli and I went to the Capitol Rotunda to see Gerald Ford's coffin lying in state. It was my idea for us to view it. Last night, when we discussed it, Eli was puzzled by my wanting to do this, and I explained to him that I have long been fascinated by history and politics. I wanted to witness this political-historic ritual. Eli protested that Ford was a mediocrity and that few people could remember anything he did other than pardon Nixon. I insisted on going nonetheless. We chatted about the things he was perhaps, according to Timothy Noah in Slate, undercredited for. Putting together a remarkably capable administration, bringing the inflation rate to under 5 percent.

So, this morning we walked to the Capitol. We went wended our way south and east on DC"s grid, passing gentrifying areas and down-at-the-heels areas. Eli expressed a desire to stop in at a Starbucks and get in out of the cold, but there was nary a Starbucks to be had. The walk was instructive. We saw churches, of both the rundown and stately, proud variety, empty bottles of Crown Royal, young people jogging, a man sitting on the sidewalk, doubled over, apparently sick and inebriated, out in the cold.

As we approached the Capitol, Eli said, "Look, there are throngs of people come to see Gerald Ford."

"You're teasing me," I observed.

When the line did come into sight, we were surprised at how long it was, but we learned that the wait was only an hour long, a dramatic contrast with the six or more hours people stood in line to view Reagan's body.

Eli and I watched the other visitors (it seems over the top to call us mourners) and wondered what had brought them there. A love for Ford or the feeling that witnessing this was part of being American? Toddlers patiently holding their parents hands, older people, teens who were born well after the Ford administration, a surprising number of Masons clad in chains and colorful smocks. ("If I'm going to join a secret society, it won't be one with bibs," Eli remarked.)

As we waited to the line to move, I offered, weakly , that Ford led at a more bipartisan time than the country has experienced since. I wondered whether moderate, bipartisan politicians are fated to be remembered as mediocrities because the vocal, extreme ideologists will not sing their praises. As we live in a time when moderation is scarce and two Americans seem to be starting at each other from accross a wide gap, being a moderate--a force for holding the country together--seems to me a valient thing. Perhaps all the more heroic because these moderates are destined to be underappreciated in what they do for us. I think it was John Adams, having refused to cater to the popular desire to go to war with the British, who said, "Let is say on my grave. 'He saved the Union.'"

After about an hour, we had passed through security. We turned a corner from the security tent and found our selves on a landing on the Capitol steps, with a view of downtown spread before us. We turned towards the building and marveled at the intricate details carved into the marble stone. We turned a corner and came up the steps into the Capitol Rotunda.

Seeing the president lying in state turned out not to be a reflective experience. It was more of a martial experience. The capitol police whispered, as we slowed to look at the flad-draped coffin, "Keep the line moving!" About five soldiers in uniform stood perfectly still around the coffin. We looked at them more than at the coffin, wondering how anyone keeps so still for so long with so many eyes on them. What might they be thinking? We glimpsed the famous statues out of the corner of our eyes as we were walked out of the Rotunda.

washington times flub

2006-12-31T17:03:00.000-05:00

On Shabbat, Eli and I walked to the White House and back. We had no clue what the big news of the day was until we passed a Washington Post machine and saw the headline "Saddam Hussein put to death."

Later, we passed a Washington Times vending machine and saw that, not surprisingly, their headline had an editorial slant.
"Saddam Pays at End of Rope." A few inches below that they had unintentionally put an incongruous headline: "Six Days of Mourning Begin." For Gerald Ford, of course.

Joggers for breakfast, anyone?

2006-12-22T11:20:00.000-05:00

Simply unbelievable.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/22/AR2006122200317.html?referrer=emailarticlepg

great article on religious diversity

2006-12-15T13:05:00.000-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401943.html

The students in the article are amazingly diverse and the reporter got great details out of them about their own experiences.

trials and tribulations of the absent minded

2006-12-15T12:17:00.000-05:00

Today, I organized my study location around the 1030 am due date for a book I got off reserve last night. I packed my backpack with the things I would need to continue working on my paper and headed out to the library. Upon arriving there, I discovered that I had forgotten the book at home. But once in the library, ready to work, what's the point of wasting time to go home only to return again? (It's 20 minutes each way.) The opportunity cost of staying here to study is $1/hour, since that's what I'm being charged in late fees.

Hopefully, I'll finish my paper by this afternoon and have time to make the 40 minute trek to SAIS and back again so I can drop off the late book.

my milton friedman streak

2006-12-13T23:36:00.000-05:00

"Capitalism isn't heartless enough for you."
--Eli

two finals down . . .

2006-12-12T22:14:00.000-05:00

One more and two papers left to go.

one exam down . . .

2006-12-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

two more and two papers to go!

muzak

2006-12-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

One of my neigbors is blasting Christmas music as I am prepping for finals. I feel sort of like I'm studying in a mall.

you know you're a grad student when . . .

2006-12-10T23:20:00.000-05:00

You get a letter from your bank telling you that you have a negative balance in your savings account.

final class session of the semester

2006-12-07T23:07:00.000-05:00

I had my final class of the semester today. International Monetary Theory with Arroyo. When he finished lecturing the course material, we burst into applause. He said that he appreciated it. He also deserved it for making the material beautifully clear.

There's a real professor.

technology can be a wonderful thing

2006-12-07T12:05:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that a Russian company has one mobile phone plan just for the deaf and hard of hearing. It charges 40 kopecks per text message (which is 1.3 cents) for the first one thousand text messages that the person makes in a month, with no subscriber fee. Not surprisingly, it charges a LOT for actual calls (25 cents per minute local) maybe so that non-deaf people don't get the service just to send cheap text messages?

http://www.msk.beeline.ru/tarifs/tarif.wbp?tarif_id=32b5394c-4586-436b-8a85-adf4340c9404

Mary Chaney

2006-12-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

Me: Hey, the Post says that Mary Chaney is pregnant.

Eli: I'm not responsible I promise. No trust in this relationship at all.

meditating . . ?

2006-12-03T23:53:00.000-05:00

Eli teased me this evening about giving up my studying for the night at about 1130 PM, jokingly calling me lazy. I asked him which of us had spent a few hours watching TV, and he replied, "I wasn't watching TV, I was meditating." A fine alibi. Points for creativity.

berezovskiy: tanned, rest, and ready?

2006-12-03T23:49:00.000-05:00

This past week in my Russian class we watched an RTVI clip of Berezovskiy filmed a few weeks ago in which he discussed Politkovskaya's murder. He looked tanned, rested, and ready, as they used to say of Nixon. (I supposed it's not hard for a billionaire to maintain a villa get-away where he can keep his tan in order.) Not that he could ever be president of Russia, but I couldn't help but think of that phrase that those who wanted to put Nixon back in office used to describe him when he was already, like BAB, a the object of his home country's immense distrust.

Exchange Rate Ecclesiasticism

2006-10-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

"Ask yourself, 'What Would George Soros Do?'" ~ My econ prof (unintentionally, I think), while explaining arbitrage.

eli's wit

2006-10-10T09:29:00.000-05:00

"You are a failure as a mammal" ~Eli, last night, when I got out of bed to put socks on because my feet were cold.

thoughts on Borat

2006-10-04T20:46:00.000-05:00

I was watching video photage of Sasha Baron-Cohen (aka Borat) crashing a much awaited statue unveiling at the Kazakhstani Embassy (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092900006.html), and I realized why the DC press and the public love Borat so much.

Borat cuts through the superficial sameness of official international affairs. Foreign leaders and diplomats mouth whatever the West wants to hear, and we always wonder," What do they really think?" Official foreign afffairs seems to be about foreign dignitaries saying that they're just like the Americans, that they value the same things, and any real difference is whitewashed. And you wonder what it's really like in their home countries, what dirty secrets the regime doesn't want us to know, and how their values differ from ours.

Borat tells us, unashamedly, about his "Kazakhstani" values, about his pride in the Tishnik massacre, about his multiple wives, about his sister (the best prostitute in all Kazakhstan), about evading gypsies and "the Jew with the claw." On the one hand, you could say that he fulfills our American expectation that we're culturally superior. But I think that there's something more to it than that. I think that we want exoticism and difference. We suspect that there are people out there who take pride in their slayings and have sisters who work as prostitutes, and we wonder what they're like, but they're not the face of foreign affairs that we see. We wonder about people whose differences are less titallating that murder and sex work. We wonder about the guy with a cow living in his house. In a world that's shrinking, where you can find a Taco Bell in Thailand, Borat provides that amazing and amusing difference, naively and without shame.

eli and I at his sister and brother-in-law's wedding

2006-09-01T07:35:00.000-05:00

I'm putting this picture up so that I can use it as my personal photo for my blog. It's from Sara and Alan's wedding in May, which was unbelievably sweet.